The 4th "Thread": Jewish History (Hasidim & Traditions)

2. Years of Silence

5. Years of Silence The 4th “thread”: Jewish History (Hasidim & Traditions) In Exodus 19-24, the covenant of God with His people was established: Jehovah would be their God and they would be His people. “Now therefore, if you will indeed obey My voice and keep My covenant, then you shall be a special treasure to Me above all people; for all the earth is Mine. And you shall be to Me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.” (Ex. 19:5-6) The people failed to keep their side of the covenant. • Turned to idolatry captivity

6. Years of Silence The 4th “thread”: Jewish History (Hasidim & Traditions) After their return from captivity, they still failed to become the “peculiar treasure” that God had envisioned: they took spouses from the people of the land. “The people of Israel and the priests and the Levites have not separated themselves from the peoples of the lands, with respect to the abominations of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Jebusites, the Ammonites, the Moabites, the Egyptians, and the Amorites.” (Ezra 9:1-2) Ezra instructs the people to separate themselves from the foreign wives they had married, and to separate themselves morally and spiritually from the “peoples of the land.”

7. Years of Silence The 4th “thread”: Jewish History (Hasidim & Traditions) Over time, a portion of the Jews took the thought of separation to the extreme…possibly the origin of the Hasidim (“pious ones”). These individuals continue to pursue the idea of obeying the law very carefully. Their thoughts were founded on the following concepts:

8. Years of Silence The 4th “thread”: Jewish History (Hasidim & Traditions) • A fear that not obeying God would bring His curse upon them again (as it had when they worshipped idols). • A thought that their obedience would bring God’s blessings upon them, as if they would obligate God to bless them.

9. Years of Silence The 4th “thread”: Jewish History (Hasidim & Traditions) • The position of High Priest became more corrupt, the PIOUS ONES or Hasidim (chasidim) developed the idea they were to be a kingdom of priest. Ex 19:6 • They decided they would conduct their everyday lives so that they could offer their obedience to God as sacrifices. They structured their obedience with rituals, so that praying, fasting, washing of hands, and many other things had to follow elaborate ceremonies in order to sacrifice to God.

10. Years of Silence The 4th “thread”: Jewish History (Hasidim & Traditions) • They set out to reduce every possible law to a series of rules so that one could know how to obey each law. They wanted to “build a fence” to guide exactly how and where to walk. • From this concept of “building a fence,” came the following: • Halakhah: collection of traditions and rules. • Haggadah: comprised parables, folklore, history, and similar material. • Midrash: to provide scriptural pretexts to justify oral traditions (scriptural investigation).

11. Years of Silence During the years of silence, and continuing through the days of the New Testament, these rules and traditions were oral, but they came to be considered as binding and sacred as the scriptures themselves. Rabbis, scribes and Pharisees argued every minute detail about each law and each tradition, making them more complex each year.

12. Years of Silence The 4th “thread”: Jewish History (Hasidim & Traditions) • The oral traditions were not written down until about A.D. 200 by Rabbi Judah ha-Nasi: • Talmud • Mishnah: supplements the OT and is mainly an interpretation of the written law of the Bible. • Gemara: consists of interpretations of the laws of the Mishnah, the Halakhah, and the Haggadah. • Two different versions of the Talmud: • Palestinian Talmud • Babylonian Talmud

13. Years of Silence The 4th “thread”: Jewish History (Jewish Sects) • Pharisees: • During reign of Seleucid kings, the “pious ones" or (Hasidim) strongly resisted efforts to corrupt their religion and supported the Maccabean revolt. Once the revolt was successful, they withdrew their support from them. • The term Pharisee means “separated ones” • Josephus places the origin of the Pharisees in the time of Jonathan Maccabee, the successor of Judas Maccabee (160-143 B.C) • A clear break between the Pharisees and the Maccabees occurred in the days of John Hyrcanus (134-104 B.C.)

14. Years of Silence The 4th “thread”: Jewish History (Jewish Sects) • Pharisees: • Pharisees (separated ones) became an opposition party to the Hasmonean family (“aristocrats”) and were well supported among the common people. • Since concepts like justice and mercy are hard to measure, the Pharisees looked more to the laws that could be counted, weighed, or measured. (Ref. Mt. 23:23-24) • Noted by Paul as “the strictest sect of our religion.” • Ac 26:5 "They knew me from the first, if they were willing to testify, that according to the strictest sect of our religion I lived a Pharisee.

15. Mt 23:23 "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith. These you ought to have done, without leaving the others undone. 24 "Blind guides, who strain out a gnat and swallow a camel! 25 "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you cleanse the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of extortion and self-indulgence.

16. The Talmud lists seven categories of Pharisees: 1. who parades good deeds 2. who lets business wait in order to do a good deed 3. who walks into a wall to keep from looking at a woman 4. who with false humility walks with his head down 5. who asks what good deeds he might do that would be reckoned as canceling out his neglects 6. who is in terror of God 7. who like Abraham loves God

17. Years of Silence The 4th “thread”: Jewish History (Jewish Sects) • Sadducees: • Developed about the same time as the Pharisees. • Favorable to the Greek cause and thus did not participate in the early phases of the Maccabean Revolt. • They wanted Judea to compromise with the Greeks for their political welfare; they saw no harm in adopting whatever Greek custom came their way. • A party of the aristocratic priests, and had very little popularity among the common people. • Believed in God and in the law, but rejected the traditions of the scribes and Pharisees.

18. Years of Silence The 4th “thread”: Jewish History (Jewish Sects) • Sadducees: • Identified by Josephus with the upper social and economic echelon of Judean society. • The religious responsibilities of the Sadducees included the maintenance of the Temple in Jerusalem. • Did not look for a future reward for their obedience to God. They did not believe in a resurrection, in angels, or in anything beyond this life. (Ref. Acts 23:8) neither did they believe in resurrection, angels or a spirit but the Pharisees acknowledge them all

19. Years of Silence The 4th “thread”: Jewish History (Jewish Sects) • Conflicts between Pharisees and Sadducees: • Class: Poor / Wealthy • Cultural: Against Hellenization / Supported Hellenization (acceptance of Greek culture & customs) • Worship: Acceptance of the oral traditions (Talmud) / Only recognized the written Torah (literal interpretation) 19

20. Years of Silence The 4th “thread”: Jewish History (Jewish Sects) • Essenes: • A group who thought the Pharisees were extremely liberal. • They lived in various cities but congregated in communal life dedicated to asceticism (severe self-discipline and avoidance of all forms of indulgence, typically for religious reasons), voluntary poverty, daily immersion, and abstinence from worldly pleasures, including (for some groups) celibacy.

21. Years of Silence The 4th “thread”: Jewish History (Jewish Sects) • Essenes: • Josephus further adds that the Essenes ritually immersed in water every morning, ate together after prayer, devoted themselves to charity and benevolence, forbade the expression of anger, studied the books of the elders, preserved secrets, and were very mindful of the names of the angels kept in their sacred writings. • Commonly associated with, and thought to have recorded, the Dead Sea Scrolls (found in 1947).

25. Some of the writings of the dead sea scrolls found in 1947

26. Years of Silence 26

27. Years of Silence The 4th “thread”: Jewish History (Jewish Sects) • Zealots: • Probably did not appear until early in the 1st century after the Romans took control of Judea. • Exceedingly zealous for the establishment of the Jewish state. • Believed that they should fight to establish God’s predicted kingdom, and then God would come to their aid and usher in a glorious political state. • Simon the Zealot; one of Jesus’ twelve apostles.

28. Years of Silence The 4th “thread”: Jewish History (Jewish Sects) • Zealots: • Played an important role in the downfall of Jerusalem in A.D. 70. • By that time, they had laid aside all rules of proper conduct and had become a group of terrorists. They apparently started many of the riots that broke out in the first century.

29. Years of Silence The 4th “thread”: Jewish History (The Sanhedrin) • The Jewish High Court (Sanhedrin) • May have been in existence as early as 200 B.C. when Syria took control of Judea from Egypt. • The name (Sanhedrin) is a Hebrew spelling of a Greek word that means “a senate”, or a governing body. • Formed as part of the local force of law. • The Sanhedrin is mentioned in the Gospels in relation to the Sanhedrin trial of Jesus and several times in the Acts of the Apostles (Acts 4, 22) • The number of Sanhedrin elders varied from 70-72 • The number may have come from history where 70 elders were sent to ratify the Old Law. Ex 24:1

30. What can we learn from this study? • 1. Obey God’s commandments not adding to or taking away from His word. • Re 22:18 For I testify to everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book: If anyone adds to these things, God will add to him the plagues that are written in this book; • 19 and if anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part from the Book of Life, from the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book.